Clattery MacHinery on Poetryhttps://clatterymachinery.wordpress.com
Sun, 03 Sep 2017 03:31:26 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngClattery MacHinery on Poetryhttps://clatterymachinery.wordpress.com
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Treasonhttps://clatterymachinery.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-treason/
https://clatterymachinery.wordpress.com/2016/12/16/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-treason/#respondFri, 16 Dec 2016 10:50:36 +0000http://clatterymachinery.wordpress.com/?p=799]]>It’s beginning to look a lot like treason
Everywhere you go;
Consider the CIA views on election day;
The e-mail hacks were Russian we now know.
It’s beginning to look a lot like treason;
Trump owes Russia more
Than he pays on his income tax, the robbers from Goldman Sachs
At the White House door.

He called upon Vlad to do something quite bad
For his own political gain;
Scandals to spike for Donald and Mike
At the expense of Clinton and Kaine;
The President and Congress waiting for a judgment day.

It’s beginning to look a lot like treason
Everywhere you go;
There’s a Benedict Arnold air, with G-People out to snare,
Conspirators whose motives go too low.
It’s beginning to look a lot like treason;
Soon arrests will start,
And the thing that will make them sing are the deals the Feds will bring
That show Trump’s part!

I took a short walk about an hour ago, to get some stamps and lottery tickets.

Just before reaching the first store, I run into an older white guy. We both say Hi. He does a double take and says, “Hey, do you have a brother who lives in Lowell?” I say, “No, my brother lives in Pelham.” He says, “Oh, because you look just like this guy Roger, don’t know what his last name is.” I tell him my name. He replies “I’m John M—-” and we shake hands.

In the very next breath he asks what I think of black people, saying that his wife doesn’t like the Haitians because they use the system for money, while we have to go out to work. I say that white people do the same thing. He says not as much as black people. I say, “Oh sure, and so do the Cambodians, the Hispanics . . .” He interrupts me and says, “Oh, the Cambodians. They’re the worst.” I say no, they’re not.

John closes our conversation saying that sometimes when he meets people who do not agree with him, it makes him feel stupid. I tell him that it is nice to meet him, and I’ll see him around. He says goodbye in a friendly way.

I go across the street and buy stamps at the local supermarket. I cross the next street over, and get lottery tickets at the packy. I start my walk back home, and run into John again, sitting on the wall at the same corner. I ask if he is waiting for the bus. He says yes. I ask him where he is going.

He tells me where, and says that he lost two homes to predatory loans, but that he got a good lawyer who got him into this nice place for housing. I ask how much he pays for rent. He says $400-something. I ask who pays the rest? He hesitates. Then says the state has an elderly housing program.

All along, I had been wondering if he had seen me walking in the neighborhood with my “black” girlfriend. He asks my age, and then tells me to see Susan-something, if I want to get an apartment there, that to mention his name, and say that I have known him for 20 years—that sometimes we have to lie.

I say “Thanks anyway,” and that I’ll see him around. We smile and part ways.

Part of the ideal in creating an economy is to figure out how to optimize growth and production and decrease scarcity, while at the same time distributing goods in beneficial ways. Furthermore, with the absence of tyranny, everyone would get good food, a good place to stay, access to health care, access to the lands of the country, and so forth. So any command aspects of the economy would only be to serve the greater good, as would any and all self-interest aspects.

What happens when some people, our infirm for instance, cannot participate in the machinery of the economic system? More generally, what happens with those who are unable, such that common interest collides with self interest? The idea is to return to the ideal and say that “everyone would get good food, a good place to stay, access to health care, access to the lands of the country, and so forth.” That is where the re-creation or evolution of the economic system pivots, where at all times it is in service to a representative government, an ideal that should remain what we are continuously striving to perfect, no matter how entrenched our imperfect system gets.

Those unable or less able to participate in what has been set up to benefit us all, still should participate fully in the benefits. We just have a hard time getting a system going that works like that, as we continuously compromise ourselves to the imperfect system. There is no good reason, other than some ultimate benefit to everyone, that Bill Gates should have more money and access to the good life, than any other single one of us. He may be a good person, but he is not billions of times better as a person than someone who is unable to do works such as he has done. The bottom line, as it were, is that we would value each citizen equally and fully, and to be continuously questioning how we can change our economic system such that it serves each and all of us better.

The same thing that happens with those who are either unable or less able to participate in an economic system that pivots on self interest, is what happens with those attending to the arts and spiritual aspects of life. They are either sidelined or not in the game. The strength of an economy is measured by what the bean counters can attend to. Yet art and spirituality cannot be effectively measured this way. Where is the evidence that Frida Kahlo’s paintings are worthy of anything more or other than a place on a rich person’s wall? There may be none, but they are far more and otherwise worthy. That our bean-counting market system makes little or less room for the theologians and artists among us, does not mean that they should not be part of the “everyone” who “would get good food, a good place to stay, access to health care, access to the lands of the country, and so forth,” or be the beneficiaries of what might be considered the charity of the more “fortunate”.

Nor does it mean that we should align with bean counters who only wonder if people would be more productive and earn more money if and how they are spiritual and enjoy which types of art. It is only one aspect of art, of Frida Kahlo’s works, that somehow they would make anyone a more productive employee. Art is not for the economy’s sake. Art is in no way in service to the market system. One of its functions is to be there to expose the economy for its faults. Who’s judging who? Art judges economy, not vice versa.

The manufacturing tycoon’s money is merely his, because the rest of us say he can have it, and only for as long as the rest of say he can have it. It may be a game of Monopoly we’ve decided to play, but Monopoly is only a game, and a person’s net value is not ultimately measured in how she plays such a game, or even her interest in it. Any money we say that the tycoon must give over to art or spirituality, that part that we say that he cannot have, is not his. That’s our money in a representative government—just as in a monarchy we would say he is rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.

We get the bean counters, who want artists and theologians to justify themselves to the economy, when their justification is to the greater citizenry, to humanity as a whole, to humanity through time, and any life or spirituality that may be transcendent of that. It is part of being human to create good art, bad art, and everything in between. It is a sick, lopsided society that, when the economy is failing, the artists and theologians are made to suffer disproportionately.

Yes, there is a case for bad art. For instance, Samina Malik, who was jailed in the UK for writing a bad poem, and then rightly let go. The creative process is so misunderstood, the political machinery in its ignorance had her incarcerated for a time.

Let’s look at another case of poetry, one that may or may not be good, depending on what you as an individual think of it. After then-poet laureate of New Jersey Amiri Baraka recited his poem Somebody Blew Up America, the state decided to no longer have a poet laureate, to completely do away with the position. The challenge to the political establishment was too great.

A benefit from art and spirituality is that they challenge the status quo of the money machine, which can lead to an industrial machine, a science machine, a technology machine, to the point of being a threat. Laws are created to prevent such threats, and artists and spiritual activists throughout time, up to and including today, are imprisoned, some tortured, and some even killed for their expressions.

Arts and humanities show us more of what it means to be human. At a basic level, an artist may simply be displaying what it is like to be another person. Culturally broader art steps outside the established modes of thinking and being, to display wider possibilities than are available in society. When it is not pointing directly to the outcomes of greed and the plight of those left outside the machinery, it can be bringing us beauty to consider, or even ugliness, other ways of seeing the world and our place in it, that are not part of the paradigm needed to produce goods and make profits.

I have news for you atheists: there may be a god. You don’t know. You have decided. That there is no room for god in commerce, is a great pull to atheism. Atheists have selected to believe that which is available within the limitations of commerce and industry. When we check out at a store, the cashier says, “Thank you” to us, not “Thank you and god bless”–heaven forbid. Or how about, “Thank you, you are loved”?

There are fully other sides to being human, than those fostered by the economy left to itself as a system, a system bent on growing and absorbing each of us. There are aspects to being human that an economy given full power would not allow us to participate in, or even hint at. Art so threatens. Spirituality brings morals and ethics that threaten. These parts of us are transcendent of the social and economic systems that we have chosen for ourselves.

We need to interject, to say that everyone gets to participate in art and spirituality, just as “everyone would get good food, a good place to stay, access to health care, access to the lands of the country, and so forth.” We are all not only above the law, but above the economy.

Jack Kerouac’s Childhood Homes in West Centralville—66 West St. Turns into Rt. 66 West

The collage shows Jack Kerouac with all six of his homes in the West Centralville section of Lowell Massachusetts, plus the St. Louis School, part of the parish. The photo of Kerouac is taken from an interview in French with English subtitles. That’s what he said in French, “The children, however, are important.”

Below, we will look at each of his early childhood homes, from the time he was born, until he was ten-years-old, when the Kirouacks moved just a little west of his birthplace on Lupine Road, into the Pawtucketville section of the city. The Merrimack River vees north in Lowell, and at the tip is the crossover from Centralville to Pawtucketville, just south of the town of Dracut. It is from that narrow tip of the V, that both of Kerouac’s sections of the city flower out, Centralville to the east and Pawtuckville to the west. They are the only two parts of Lowell north of the Merrimack River.

_____

Jean-Louis Kerouac was born in the second-floor apartment at 9 Lupine Road on March 12, 1922. There are rumors that his mother Gabrielle (nee Gabrielle-Ange Lévesque) delivered Jack in a hospital 12 miles up river in Nashua, New Hampshire. The family had lived there before Jack was born. Nashua is where his father Leo (nee Léo-Alcide Kéroack) grew up, and where the family would bury his older brother Gerard, who died of rheumatic fever, when Jack was four-years-old. He also had an older sister Caroline, nicknamed Nin.

_____

Kerouac’s second childhood home was at 35 Burnaby Street, just a few houses from the town of Dracut, and a golf shot from the Kirouack home at Lupine Road where Jack was born. This is a nice little pocket of a neighborhood in Lowell, but a longer walk to school. From here, the family would move to 34 Beaulieu Street, one street away from St. Louis Elementary.

_____

His third of several homes growing up in the West Centralville section of Lowell, Jack Kerouac later referred to 34 Beaulieu Street as “sad Beaulieu”. The Kirouack family was living there in 1926 when Jack’s big brother Gerard died of rheumatic fever at the age of nine. Jack was four at the time, and would later say that Gerard followed him in life as a guardian angel. This is the Gerard of Kerouac’s novel Visions of Gerard.

Jack was too young for school when the Kirouacks were living on Beaulieu. His brother Gerard and sister Nin, would have gone to St. Louis from there.

_____

This is a shot west down Orleans Street, to where you can see that it ends at Lupine Road. Jack birthplace is two houses after you take the left down there. Before you get to Lupine, you cannot tell from the photo, but Burnaby Street where his second childhood home is, is a right hand turn about a third of the way down. This is a back-to-back shot from the top of Orleans with the next photo that goes east down to Hildreth Street, where the next two, the fourth and fifth, of Kerouac’s childhood homes are.

_____

This is a shot east down Orleans Street, which begins down there at Hildreth. The yellow building at the tip of the V perspective is a house facing from Hildreth. Taking a right there will lead you about a quarter then half a mile to two of Jack’s childhood homes, at 320 then 240 Hildreth Street. This is a back-to-back shot from the top of Orleans with the photo just above it. When Jack lived in West Centralville, he lived in the western most parts of West Centralville.

_____

In 1927, the year after Jack’s brother Gerard died, the Kirouacks moved to an apartment at 320 Hildreth Street, Jack’s 4th childhood home. It is here that young Jack began school, which allowed his mother to start work at a shoe factory. The shot is from the street in front of the McKenna-Ouellette Funeral home, a place Lowellians will know. Looking down Hildreth on the left side of the photograph, you can see houses on the odd side of the street as Hildreth curves right. Those are about halfway to Kerouac’s next house, 240 Hildreth.

_____

St. Louis School in the early afternoon, parents getting their kids. This is one street over from Beaulieu, where Jack’s third childhood home is. This and 34 Beaulieu are between 240 Hildreth, his fifth home, and 66 West Street, his sixth. These are the eastern most homes he would have in Lowell as a child, 9 Lupine and 35 Burnaby being the westernmost of his Centralville homes, 320 Hildreth being in the middle.

I understand that the particular school building that Jack went to has been replaced. The photo is of one of a complex of buildings that include the church. It says “L’Ecole St. Louis” above the door. Whatever that means, the neighbors now know it as St. Louis School.

_____

In 1929, the year Jack Kerouac turned seven, about the time the Great Depression began, his family moved from 320 Hildreth to 240 Hildreth, Jack’s fifth home. Much of this moving apparently had to do with his father’s gambling debts. This summer of 2010, the owners of 240 Hildreth have put up a new retaining wall, steps, porch, and fence.

_____

That’s 66 West Street on the left. But notice the two stop signs. This house is at a 5-way intersection with Stanley and West Sixth Streets.

That van at the rightmost stop sign, if it were to take a left onto West Sixth, would be heading to the St. Louis church complex, where a right would take it onto the short Beaulieu Street. To go further down West Sixth, it would merge onto Lakeview Avenue, which would take it to a street named Fred, a right there and a quick left would bring it to 9 Lupine two houses in. However, if the van were to cross the intersection and stay on West Street, West would merge with Coburn, which would end at Hildreth. A left there would bring it to 240 Hildreth, then to 320 Hildreth, then to Orleans, which as above, would take it to Burnaby Road, and down to Lupine. Jack’s houses circle St. Louis Church and School.

_____

66 West Street is Jack’s 6th childhood home, and the last one in West Centralville. But don’t let the name fool you. This is the easternmost home he would have in Centralville, before moving west to the Pawtucketville. It was at this house that Jack lived for nearly three years, when he was seven to ten years of age, the longest span of time he would ever live anywhere. This was when he first started to speak English. He wrote of life on West Street in both Dr. Sax and Visions of Cody.

Notice the number of the house, a prescient 66, as in Route 66. And notice the name of the street, West, as in “go west”. What a short mental distance from “66 West Street” to “Route 66 West,” like going back home verbally, or literally. He never lived on any street that began with East, South, or North, although he once lived in North Carolina. But he lived on the following streets: West 119th, West 118th, and West 115th Streets in New York City; West Center Avenue in Denver; and West 20th Street in New York City; as well as in West Haven Connecticut.

I did a similar amount of moving until I was 9-years-old, from Belvidere across the river, to the town of Chelmsford, to the Christian Hill (or eastern) part of Centralville, to the town of Dracut, back to Christian Hill, and then to the sixth house when I was nine, also on Christian Hill. I would stay put there until eighteen. So the moving stopped for me. But for many of us from these parts, a lot of moving around would make the streets of Lowell, whole neighborhoods in Lowell, one’s home—regularly cutting through or even playing in old back yards, for instance—to the degree that even when I moved to 18th Street in Dracut with my first wife, where a rolling little cow pasture use to be, it was an odd politics that allowed a doctor from the town of Chelmsford, ten miles away, to own the rental property. I was living on my stomping ground. What kind of cock-eyed world would allow this type of Chelmsford-doctor imperialism on this sacred turf? This is a very anti-establishment and ingrained type of thinking, something along the lines of Chief Seattle.

Jack would move to Pawtucketville from here, where he would live in at least another three homes with is family, and from where he would go to high school. Just as Centralville would lay the concrete aspects of Jack’s development of the Beat movement, Pawtucketville is where the formal operational aspects of this jolt to Western and then World culture would formulate. Much of this thinking would begin with his high school connections, and take place in homes around the city, such as the Sampas’ in the Highlands across the river. The jump from Centralville to Pawtucketville would take him On the Road—his entire life, and ours.

I have been inspired to write this article on Sant Dadu Dayal (1544—1603) of Gujarat and Rajasthan by seeing the entry on 22-2-2010 in the Sanatan Almanac (Hindu Calendar rooted in Sanatana Dharma) published by Sanatan Sanstha in Goa. The entry on this date relates to ‘Dadu Dayal Jayanthi, Rajasthan, Gujarat’.

This great Hindu Calendar of Sanatan Sanstha is a veritable Hindu Encyclopedia. It is a spiritual power station of our timeless Hindu tradition. It is a storage warehouse of the most precious jewels of Hinduism. It is a Hindu Library; a great Hindu Amphitheatre; a Hindu Museum; a Hindu Hall of Timeless Archives; a seat of Hindu Justice and above all a seat of Informal Hindu People’s Government. This beautiful Hindu calendar rooted in Sanatana Dharma is now available in five languages–Marathi, Hindi, Kannada, Telugu and English. I understand efforts are afoot to bring out this Hindu calendar in two more languages—Tamil and Malayalam. It is absolutely necessary in the larger national interest of promotion of Hindu Unity and Hindu Solidarity to bring out this calendar in all the major languages of India without any further delay. I offer my reverential salutations to Guruji H.H.Bhaktaraj Maharaj and his chosen disciple Guruji Dr.Jayant Balaji Athavale for giving us all the blessing of seeing and using this Hindu Calendar everyday.

Dadu Dayal Jayanthi falls today (22-2-2010). Dadu Dayal (1544-1603) was a great saint from Gujarat who spent the best part of his spiritual life in Rajasthan. Consequently he has thousands of devotees both in Gujarat and Rajasthan who worship him with great reverence and devotion. “Dadu” means brother, and “Dayal” means “the compassionate one”.

Very few authentic details relating to the early life of Dadu Dayal ji Maharaj are available. Born in Ahmedabad in 1544, he made Rajasthan his home. Like Saint Kabir, Dadu came from one of the many lower artisan castes. It is said that Dadu was a foster son of Lodhi Ram, a Naga Brahmin of Ahmedabad, who had found the infant floating on the waves of the Sabarmati river in 1545. Dadu Dayal lived in the Jaipur region of Rajasthan, most probably as a pinjari, a cotton carder. He married and had a family of two sons and two daughters. He attained Samadhi in Naraina in Jaipur district in 1603. Emperor Akbar is said to have been one of his followers.

Dadu Dayal is one of the major representatives of the Nirguna Sant traditions in Northern India. He gathered around himself a group of followers, which became known as the Dadu-panth in his own lifetime. This organization has continued in Rajasthan to the present-day, and has been a major source of early manuscripts containing songs by the North Indian saints.

Dadu ji had 100 disciples who followed his teachings and attained salvation. He instructed an additional 52 disciples to set up ashrams, known as ‘Thambas’ around the region to spread the Lord’s word.

Five thambas are considered sacred by the followers, namely, Naraina, Bhairanaji, Sambhar, Amer, and Karadala (Kalyanpura). Followers of these thambas then spread and set up other places of worship.

Shri Dadu Dham Bhairana, which lies in the secluded hilly tract of Bichoon district in the Jaipur division of Rajasthan, has become a sacred place of pilgrimage for lakhs of devotees of Saint Dadu Dayal Ji Maharaj from Haryana. The devotees come from Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra and other parts of the country. They hold the place in reverence. The remaining part of the story relating to the eternal importance of Bhairana in the life of Daduji Maharaj can now be told.

The ancient Bhairana hill, which is situated amidst exquisite natural surroundings, has been the hermitage of many saints and seers since times immemorial. It is said that at the pressing solicitations of Uddhava Bhagat, a prominent resident of Bhairana, on one occasion Daduji Maharaj himself made a brief visit to Bhairana during which time he intuitively and instantly realised the spirit of the adorable sanctity of this ancient abode of saints. Later at the time of his departure from the world in 1603, Daduji instructed his disciple-saints at Naraina thus: “After my demise, take my body to the Bhairana hill and then leave it there at the spot in its deep gorge. Hence forward, it shall be known as our sanctum-sanctorum and it shall continue to be a place of worship for saints and sadhus for all times to come in the future as well.”

Accordingly, when Dadu Ji Maharaj breathed his last on in 1603, his body was taken in a palanquin from Naraina to Bhairana and placed there in its gorge by thousands of his disciple-saints. When they were engaged in a discussion regarding the last rites to be performed, a supernatural incident is said to have occurred all of a sudden. Tila Ji, a disciple-saint of Dadu Ji Maharaj, saw his guru standing at the gate of a cave near the hilltop. He brought it to the notice of others too. Instantly Daduji Maharaj spoke “Satya Ram” to all and then vanished into the cave. According to the legend and tradition, the palanquin also disappeared and only some flowers were left there. The devotees had to remain contented with performing the last rites with those flowers at that site where now stands a large memorial, which is sacred to the Dadu-panthis.

The place is now popularly known as Dadu Khol or Dadu Ganga where ashes of saints, sadhus and other devotees of the Dadu cult are scattered at this sacred spot very much like the immersion of the ashes of the Hindus in the River Ganga at Haridwar.

Shree Dadu Dayal Dham near Kankaria Lake in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

Dadupanth even today is a strong movement in the States of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and the adjoining regions. Daduji belongs to the lineage of Nirguna Sants like Kabir and Guru Nanak.

The Vaishnava Sant tradition developed in Maharashtra and it focused on devotion to a “Saguna” form of Lord Vishnu or Lord Krishna. Another Sant tradition developed in several parts of Northern India and more particularly in the Punjab which advocated devotion to a ‘Nirguna’ form of the Lord viewed as the ineffable absolute without shape or form, the source and support of the Cosmos, by Whose Grace beings are liberated from the cycle of birth and death. Kabir, Guru Nanak, Meera Bai, Ravidas and Dadu Dayal belonged to this Nirguna Sant tradition.

Dadu Dayal was a great poet-mystic and spiritual Master of Divine Light, Sound, and Nirguna Bhakti from Rajasthan in the lineage of Guru Kabir. Dadu alludes to the bliss of Sahaja in his songs. Much of the imagery used in his songs is similar to that used by Kabir, and similar also to that used by the earlier Sahajiya Buddhists and Nath yogis. Dadu’s compositions were recorded by his disciple Rajjab and are known as the Dadu Anubhav Vaani, a compilation of 5,000 verses. His songs are in a Hindi dialect known as Braj Bhasa, being a mixture of Hindi and Rajasthani. Janagopal another disciple of Dadu Dayal wrote the earliest biography of Dadu.

Translations of Dadu bhajans are quite rare in English. Let me give an English translation of two of the verses of Sant Dadu Dayal titled ‘The Vision of the Beloved’ and ‘An Outer Guru That Is Not an Inner Guru, Not a Qualified Teacher’

I. The Vision of the Beloved

One sits fearlessly by repeating God’s Name;
the Negative Power can never consume him.
When you ride the elephant, 0h Dadu,
then dogs bark in vain.
When love and devotion arise,
one is firmly established in blissful meditation.
With the grace of the Master,
he then drinks the divine Nectar, 0h Dadu.
By being dedicated to the Lord,
millions of obstacles are removed.
A tiny spark the size of a mustard seed
burns a huge amount of wood, 0h Dadu.
Impurities and blemishes of the mind
are burnt up in the fire of separation.
The separated lover will now see
the vision of the Beloved, 0h Dadu.

II. An Outer Guru That Is Not an Inner Guru, Not a Qualified Teacher

The whole world makes an outer display,
whereas the practice of the Saint is within.
This is the difference between the two;
hence no accord is found between them.

A new pot taken from the potter’s furnace
may be decorated with many pictures outside;
But of what use will it be to you,
0h Dadu, without any contents?
Such are the ones who make outer display of religiosity.

From one who bears no outer religious symbols,
but has unfathomable riches within,
receive the wealth and keep it within
your heart, 0h Dadu, and be obedient to such a Saint.

There is a great difference between a Saint and a mimic,
the two are as far apart as earth and sky.
The Saint is absorbed in God, whereas
the mimic pins his hopes on the world.

The One alone dwells within my heart,
Day and night I repeat His Name.
The Name of God alone is true;
keep that within your heart.
Forsake all hypocrisies and cumbrous practices;
this is the teaching of all Saints, 0h Dadu.

We can see the essence of similarity between the above verse and the following verse of Kabir titled ‘Weaving Your Name’. Kabir too was a mystical poet like Sant Dadu Dayal. Kabir belonged to the 15th century. Both Kabir and Sant Dadu Dayal belonged to the Nirguna Sant Tradition.

I weave your name on the loom of my mind,
To make my garment when you come to me.
My loom has ten thousand threads
To make my garment when you come to me.
The sun and moon watch while I weave your name;
The sun and moon hear while I count your name.
These are the wages I get by day and night
To deposit in the lotus bank of my heart.

I weave your name on the loom of my mind
To clean and soften then thousand threads
And to comb the twists and knots of my thoughts.
No more shall I weave a garment of pain.
For you have come to me, drawn by my weaving—
My ceaselessly weaving your name
On the loom of my mind.

I would also like to give another example from the same Nirguna Sant Tradition. Ravidas was a Hindu cobbler of 15th century Varanasi. He is remembered for his beautiful hymns and his gentle piety which drew many seeking souls to his shoe shop. I am presenting below a poem by Sant Ravidas titled ‘The City of God’, Considered one of his most beautiful poems.

Grieve Not is the name of my town.
Pain and fear cannot enter there,
Free from possessions, free from life’s taxes,
Free from fear of disease and death,

After much wandering I am coming back home
Where turns not the wheel of time and change,
And my Emperor rules, without a second or third,
In Abadan, filled with love and wisdom.

The citizens are rich in the wealth of the heart,
And they live ever free in the City of God.
Listen to Ravidas, just a cobbler:
“All who live here are my true friends.”

Philosophy in India is essentially spiritual. It is the intense spirituality of India, and not any great political structure or social organization that it has developed, that has enabled it to resist the ravages of time and the accidents of history. External invasions and internal dissensions came very near crushing its civilization many times in its history. The Greek and the Scythian, the Persian and the Mughal, the French and the English have by turn attempted to suppress it, and yet it has held its head high. India has not been finally subdued and its old flame of spirit is still burning. Throughout its life it has been living with one purpose. In every age it has fought for truth and against error. The saints and sages of India throughout its long and chequered history have striven for a socio-spiritual reformation of the country. The idea of Plato that philosophers must be the rulers and directors of society has always been practiced in India. The ultimate truths are truths of spirit, and in the light of them actual life has to be refined.

To conclude in the beautiful and sublime words of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, another great philosopher-King of India:

From the beginning of her history India has adored and idealized, not soldiers and statesmen, not men of science and leaders of industry, not even poets and philosophers who influence the world by their deeds or by their words, but those rare and more chastened spirits whose greatness lies in what they are and not in what they do; men who have stamped INFINITY on the thought and life of the country, men who have added to the invisible forces of goodness in the world. They are the saints and sages, the sants, the rishis and the maharishis of India. To a world given over to the pursuit of power and pleasure, wealth and glory, they declare the resplendent splendour and transcendental reality of the unseen world and the eternal clarion call of the spiritual life. Their self-possession and self-command, their strange, deep and subtle wisdom, their exquisite kindness and courtesy, their humility and gentleness of soul, their abounding humility, proclaim that the destiny of man is to know himself and thereby further the universal life of which he is an integral element. This supreme ideal has dominated the Indian religious landscape for more than 50 centuries.

Born on 28th August 1942 at Tiruchirappalli, South India, V. Sundaram had his education in Simla and New Delhi. He took his B.A. (Hon.) Degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi in 1961. He also took his M.A. Degree in Economics, with specialization in Industrial Economics, from Delhi University in 1963. He worked as Lecturer in Economics in Delhi University for two years till he joined the Indian Administrative Service (I.A.S.) in 1965. He was allotted to Tamil Nadu Cadre and has served with distinction in several high positions in Tamil Nadu Government from 1966 to 1994. He sought his voluntary retirement from the I.A.S. in 1994.

His record as Development Administrator in Tamil Nadu has been outstanding. He was the first Chairman of Tuticorin Port Trust. He was the architect responsible for undertaking and completing all the Port Works relating to the creation of breakwaters, the Oil Jetty and the Coal Jetty in Tuticorin Port. On account of his dynamism and vision, Tuticorin Port was put on the Maritime Map of South East Asia.

In the field of Social Welfare, he has been devoted to the welfare and rehabilitation of the physically handicapped, particularly the patients suffering from leprosy. As Director of Social Welfare, he established 10 Homes in Tamil Nadu for the rehabilitation of vagrant beggars afflicted with leprosy and leprosy patients languishing below the poverty line.

After coming out of the Government in April 1994 he has held several responsible positions both in the public and private sector. He was Administrator of the World Bank assisted National Highways Project relating to four-laning of the National Highway from Cuttack to Kolkatta with Headquarters in Bhuvaneshwar. He was Secretary-General of Hindustan Chamber of Commerce, Chennai for two years.

Till January 2010, he was working as Associate Editor of News Today (a daily in English from Chennai) and Malai Sudar (a daily in Tamil from Chennai). As a fearless journalist, he has contributed, over a period of 5 years, more than 2500 articles in the field of economics, literature, art and culture, religion and philosophy, apart from politics and public affairs. He is known for his forthright, hard-hitting and fearless journalism. His watchwords are S G S T—Stern Grim Scorching Truth! He is known for his independence and courage of conviction. His motto is: “without courage there can be no truth and without truth there is no other virtue”.

As a lover of books he has a large private library, full of rare and antiquarian books. He has authored several books and monographs.

Dr. ‘Indira’ Parthasarathy, the highly decorated and internationally known Tamil novelist and man of letters reviewed Shri Sundaram’s book Essays and Reviews, which was released in 1993:

What strikes me most after reading this modestly entitled book “Essays and Reviews,” is the immense versatility of the author. He is totally at ease dealing with marbles as well as metaphysics. This anthology features articles on wide-ranging subjects such as History, Biography, Literature, Social and Economic Development and also a few Autobiographical sketches. The recurring theme in all these topics is what appears to me Sundaram’s nostalgia for the past and his anxiety about the future. In short, he is obsessed with what he describes as “Madame Time”. . . . He is Proustean in his objective approach to the past, as golden moments gone for ever; Carlylian in glorifying heroes of a bygone era as men of nation’s destiny and Hegelian, in elevating history to replace God. To him, it appears, history is the arbiter of all values and rightly so. Sundaram is a poet at heart. It is reflected in all his writings. If poetry is a “Style in Thinking” as Eliot says, there is ample evidence in his anthology that Sundaram has his own distinctive and imaginative way in approaching his themes. All the essays in the anthology announce the arrival of a multi-dimensional scholar and also a poet—Could this be a contradiction in terms—with an instinctive genius, for discovering the “astonishingness” in the most commonplace things which Mrs. Mathuram Bhoothilingam aptly describes as “The Spirit of Wonder.”

Dr. ‘Indira’ Parthasarathy gave this final literary verdict to Shri V. Sundaram’s book. “In an era of ‘aesthetic abundance’ unfortunately ushered in by democracy and technological explosion, looking for needles in haystacks has become the full-time occupation of a Conservative reader, who still clings to the old-fashioned belief that quality is all. I don’t feel ashamed to confess that I am a Conservative in regard to my reading habits and I am immensely happy, now that I have found a needle.”

V. Sundaram is a lover and keen student of Carnatic Music. He is a trained Mridangam Player (a percussion instrument like the drums). He has a rare and magnificent collection of rare audio voices of great statesmen and men of history, scholars, philosophers and poets of international fame. A keen collector of South Indian art, he has donated several bronzes and other art objects to the Madras Museum.

V. Sundaram is married to Padma who comes from a family of distinguished Sanskrit scholars. He hails from Ennappadam village near Palghat, Kerala. His wife Padma Sundaram hails from Tondikulam Village, near Nurani Village near Palghat Town, Kerala.

Among many other things, V. Sundaram has been greatly influenced by the writings of Hans J. Morgenthau (1904-1980) and Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965).

He has kept the following quotation from the writings of Morganthau on his working table for guidance everyday:

To be able to work in the service of a great idea, on behalf of an important goal; to be able to commit every nerve, every muscle, and every drop of sweat to a work, to a great task; to grow with the work, to become greater oneself in the struggle with one’s betters’ and then to be able to say at the end: I die, but there remains something that is more important than my life and will last longer than my body: my work. That is my hope, which is worthy of tremendous efforts, that is my goal, for which it is worth living and, if need be, dying.

The other quotation is from Sir Winston Churchill. In order to stoutly defend the deathless cause of public interest, V. Sundaram sought voluntary retirement from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in 1994 at the age of 51. At that time he quoted the following words of Sir Winston Churchill and told the Press that they were his sounding signals and guiding lights: “The only shield to a man’s honour and dignity is his conscience, the sincerity and the rectitude of his actions. Armed with this shield, he shall always march amidst the ranks of honour, whichever way the fates might play.”